A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties.
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
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@Amoshias @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson the justice.gov website literally calls it “music streaming fraud”. There was no assumption made.
Yeah, I'm not adamant that it wasn't fraud, but I wonder how listener bots are fraudulent (assuming "fraud" here is taking money from the royalties pool) but AI music isn't - especially when AI music is not labeled as such and pretends to be a real artist. The only difference I can see is that the latter doesn't harm Spotify - only human artists, so Spotify DGAF.
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
i dont think spotify suffered any damages
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@brucelawson Why is this seen as a crime?
Isn't this case the whole point to using AI?
Why has the court ignored the possibility that the AI bots, which we are repeatedly told are "sentient" and have "intelligence" actually enjoyed listening to the music?
Why are the rights of AI bots being trampled on in this way without giving them a chance to present their side of the story as potential victims in a case?
/i
yes, yes. the robots benefited
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@brucelawson Don't forget effectively stealing royalties from other artists who actually deserve them...
@jzb @brucelawson How companies such as Spotity choose to pay out "royalties", which algorithms they use are at best opaque.
In a recent article in Klassekampen a Spotify user who has had a paid subscription for 16 years discovered that his favourite artists had benefited to the tune of 262 Norwegian Crowns (around EUR 23) IN TOTAL during that 16 year period.
Paywall article
Avslører hva artister tjener på din lytting
Hans Martin Austestad har vært Spotify-abonnent i 16 år. Likevel har han ikke generert mer enn 262 kroner til favorittartistene sine.
(klassekampen.no)
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@WiteWulf @brucelawson haven’t courts ruled that “AI” slop can’t be copyrighted? Licensing music you don’t own the rights to sounds like fraud.
The part I don’t get is if he acted alone why was he charged with conspiracy?
@ShadSterling @WiteWulf @brucelawson
I can imagine a scenario — in today's bizarro tech bro world where workers aren't "employees", drivers for hire aren't "taxis", and purchasing doesn't mean "owning" — where the terms of service of a Spotify type service treats their relationship with the content uploader as something other than "licensing" for tech bro technicality reasons.
Otherwise yeah, you can't license a work without holding its copyright, and this slop definitely wasn't copyrightable.
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
@brucelawson can’t imagine how this would have worked in the era of CDs.
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@Amoshias @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson the justice.gov website literally calls it “music streaming fraud”. There was no assumption made.
@WiteWulf @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson so the people accusing him said it was fraud
and your response to that is "case closed, it's fraud."
I hope you are never accused of a crime.
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
@brucelawson There’s a typo in your comment (or perhaps it’s intentional
that makes even more sense than what was probably intended, hahahahaha.(You wrote “steaming” instead of “streaming,” but when parsed as an adjective instead of a participle - or perhaps I mean a gerund? - it invites the reader to fill in a noun phrase of their choice, such as “pile of
”.) -
A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
@brucelawson O, they caught one of them.
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@ShadSterling @WiteWulf @brucelawson
I can imagine a scenario — in today's bizarro tech bro world where workers aren't "employees", drivers for hire aren't "taxis", and purchasing doesn't mean "owning" — where the terms of service of a Spotify type service treats their relationship with the content uploader as something other than "licensing" for tech bro technicality reasons.
Otherwise yeah, you can't license a work without holding its copyright, and this slop definitely wasn't copyrightable.
@ShadSterling @WiteWulf @brucelawson Here's the actual indictment, which describes his dealings with co-conspirators to pull off the scheme: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/media/1366241/dl
It also makes it clear that the fraud is essentially violating the streaming services' terms of service where he agreed (by accepting the terms of service) not to artificially boost streams of the music he uploaded. Whether the work is copyrighted, or copyrightable, doesn't seem to be a factor in the case.
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@brucelawson also : why is it a fraud.
...I guess this is what courts are for, but don't expect anything more solid than "because our terms and conditions say so!"
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@brucelawson can’t imagine how this would have worked in the era of CDs.
Probably something like
https://bookriot.com/buying-books-onto-the-bestseller-list/ -
A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
@brucelawson looks like LLM A.I. is great for the criminally minded, less so for serious tasks.
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
@brucelawson
and the "ad" in "ad infinitum" is short for "advertisement". -
@WiteWulf @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson so the people accusing him said it was fraud
and your response to that is "case closed, it's fraud."
I hope you are never accused of a crime.
@Amoshias @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson no, my initial argument in this thread (if you read allllllll the way back) was “I’m struggling to see how this is fraud”. Someone else then had a go about making assumptions that it was fraud. There is no assumption, it’s a fraud case, justice.gov says so. That doesn’t mean I suddenly agree that it *is* fraud, just that I didn’t make an assumption that the accusation was fraud when I said I was struggling with it.
Read, the, thread
*sigh*
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A man used LLMs to generate hundreds of thousands of "songs", then used bots to stream them billions of times, to collect $8m in royalties. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/north-carolina-man-pleads-guilty-music-streaming-fraud-aided-artificial-intelligence-0 Is there a better metaphor for late-stage capitalism than burning resources to make songs that are never listened to, then steaming them to robots that will never hear them, ad infinitum?
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@Amoshias @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson no, my initial argument in this thread (if you read allllllll the way back) was “I’m struggling to see how this is fraud”. Someone else then had a go about making assumptions that it was fraud. There is no assumption, it’s a fraud case, justice.gov says so. That doesn’t mean I suddenly agree that it *is* fraud, just that I didn’t make an assumption that the accusation was fraud when I said I was struggling with it.
Read, the, thread
*sigh*
@WiteWulf @toriver @alessandro @brucelawson you realize that I wasn't initially responding to you, right?
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@brucelawson That's infuriating. Also, predictable.
And influencers are using AI to add to their stories with a musical style of their choosing and their own lyrics. Where does this leave real musicians and singers?!?
@kimlockhartga @brucelawson musicians should leave spotify and use bandcamp.
